


pieces of it

by i_am_therefore_i_fight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Fix-It, Fourth of July, Gen, July 4 1996, Post-5x16, Post-Dark Side of the Moon, and then hugging a lot, breaking stuff, strong emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:12:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7861321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_therefore_i_fight/pseuds/i_am_therefore_i_fight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You wanna know what's eatin' at me?"</p><p>Sam’s not sure he does. "Yeah, I really do."</p><p>"July 4th, 1996."</p>
            </blockquote>





	pieces of it

* * *

 

 

On Earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.

~Jules Renard

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Sam probes as he hauls the cooler of beer out of the trunk and carries it around to the hood. He feels nervous, skittish. The lack of their usual soundtrack—Dean’s worn-out old jokes, the constant stream of needling comments and smug pronouncements—is putting him on edge.

Dean just looks at him for a moment, and he looks pensive, almost forlorn. Sam feels a little rumble of trepidation in his belly. Something’s not right.

Dean quickly pulls himself together, composing his features into his usual cocky nonchalance as he turns to lift another box of fireworks from the trunk. “What, you need me to entertain you all the time, Samantha?”

“No, I was just… I mean, are you okay? You seem kinda…”

Dean turns to gives him an expression of purest exasperation. “Save it, Sam. This is a night for beer, burgers, and blowing shit up. Don’t turn it into a self-help session. Alright?”

_That’s good, Dean. That almost sounded like you meant it._

“…Alright.”

Slamming the trunk of the Impala shut, Sam goes to the front of the car to claim his seat on the hood. “Pass me a beer.”

Dean gets two beers from the cooler and lobs him one, then gets the burgers out of the bag from the fast-food place and hands Sam one of those too. He climbs up onto the hood of the Impala next to Sam and twists the cap off his beer.

“You wanna start fireworks right after we eat, or you wanna wait for full dark?”

“Gotta wait for full dark, Sammy. Don’t you know how this works?”

Sam doesn’t say anything to that. He watches Dean instead.

They eat burgers and drink beer and don’t say anything for a while. The birds quiet down as the sun sets, and the crickets and cicadas take over. The dusk makes Dean’s green eyes sparkle in a way that the light somehow didn’t.

Uncharacteristically, Dean’s the first one to speak.

“You happy, Sam?”

Sam thinks at first that this is a sarcastic question— _well, here we are, we’re doing the thing, you happy now?_ —but he looks at Dean and Dean is looking back at him expectantly.

“What?”

Dean scoffs and looks away, takes another pull of his beer (is it his third? his fourth? more?). “Not a trick question, there, Sammy.”

“What, you mean right now?”

“Sure. Or in general, you know.” Dean makes a vague hand motion. “At all. Ever.”

“Yeah, I… I mean… dude, what exactly are you asking?”

“I said it’s not a fucking trick question, Sam,” Dean says quietly.

Sam looks at him for a second, then looks away, swigging his beer, trying to give himself time to think. Dean’s jaw is tight, eyes staring straight ahead, practically flashing a neon fucking sign that all is not well. _Danger ahead. Proceed carefully._

“Yeah,” he says at last, shrugging. “I mean, we’ve been through a lot of shit. And… our lives have pretty much sucked these last few years. But we’re still here, and we save people, and… and that’s what matters, right?”

A muscle twitches in Dean’s cheek.

_Wrong answer._

“Sure,” Dean says. “That’s what matters.”

“Dean, what’s…”

Dean lifts his beer to take a drought. Doesn’t look at him. “Forget it, Sam.”

“Dean.”

“I said forget it.”

“ _No_.” It comes out louder than he intended, but it gets Dean’s attention; Dean looks at him, eyebrows raised, and Sam clears his throat and drops his voice back to a conversational volume to conclude, “I’m not gonna drop it, so you might as well tell me.”

Dean stares at him for a moment, then snorts and looks away, lifting his beer for another sip. It’s empty, and he glares at it with an air of personal offense before tossing it onto the ground by the Impala with the rest (two six-packs’ worth? Have they drunk that many already?) of the empty bottles. “Yeah, alright, you stubborn fuck. You wanna know what’s eatin’ at me?”

Sam’s not sure he does. “Yeah, I really do.”

“July 4th, 1996.”

“…”

“You were thirteen—”

“I remember.” He remembers it clearly. It was a good night. A great night. But it’s not like Dean to get sentimental. Moody, sure, but he usually broods over all the ugly shit that’s happened between them; he doesn’t get all teary-eyed and emotional over the good stuff, little enough that there was. “So what?”

Dean snorts, gives Sam a contemptuous look. Shakes his head. “ _So what_ ,” he repeats, almost to himself. He leans down to grab another beer and pops the top off to take a drink.

“Dean.”

“What.”

“I can’t read your mind, dude. You gotta talk to me.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean takes a long, long pull, then lowers the beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “It was heaven.”

Sam doesn’t understand where he’s going with this. It was a good night, sure, but hardly the kind of strippers-and-booze thing that usually gets Dean talking in divine terms.

“It… was a pretty good night,” he says cautiously.

That makes Dean laugh bitterly, and the sound is like the earth cracking apart. “No, Sam, I mean it was literally _heaven_. It was my fuckin’ heaven. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

It clicks. Sam has to close his eyes for a moment.

“Oh.”

“But not you, man. Not you. You had your… your Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Dean…”

“No, you know what? It’s fine. It’s fine. Really. I’ve heard enough about how we’re ‘in this together,’ I’m really not interested in getting the lecture again. I’m glad you got that chance. _So_ glad you could be happy for once in your life. Sorry, was it twice? Three times? However many times you ran away from us.” Dean shrugs. “I can’t remember. Point is, I’m glad you could be happy _at all_ , since obviously you couldn’t manage it when you were with me and Dad. Or with just me. So, it’s fine. No need to talk about it again.”

Sam clenches his fingers around his beer bottle. “Dean, listen.”

“Really don’t need to hear anything else, Sam.”

“No, you know what?” Sam slides off the hood of the car and takes a few steps away, white-knuckling his beer. He kicks one of the empty bottles—it flies across the clearing in an arc and shatters somewhere in the darkness—and then turns back around to glare at Dean. “Shut the fuck up. You _never_ gave me the chance to explain that. You were mad then, so I figured I’d wait for you to cool off. But then we got to the fucking  _center of Heaven_ and it was _our garden_ and we were there _together_ , so I figured it didn’t really bear any more explaining. I figured you’d be _over_ it, since it was so _fucking_ obvious that _you_ were what I wanted. But no, obviously that didn’t get through to you. And you’re still mad, and you still don’t want to listen to me, but fuck you. You never even gave me the chance to explain.”

Dean’s watching impassively, but his knuckles are white on his beer, too. He gives a little nod. “My fault. Right. Obviously. You deepest desire was to get away from me and Dad, all your good memories were from times when you managed to escape us, but yeah, obviously our relationship suffered because I didn’t give you time to tell me how  _sorry_ you were and how much you wanted us to be on the same _team_.”

“It wasn’t my deepest desire!” Sam yells, kicking another glass bottle against a distant tree to shatter. Frustration is rising in him, a torrent of anger and hurt. He knows what he has to do to fix this, and he knows he’s acting like a child, but he’s _afraid_. He’s afraid Dean will laugh at him. He’s afraid Dean won’t care. He’s afraid he’ll open up his heart to Dean and Dean will just give him that _look_ that makes him want to wither away into nothing and disappear.

He turns away from the Impala, rubbing his free hand over his face. Looks up at the sky, breathing deep, trying to recapture his runaway heartbeat. The first stars are twinkling to life overhead.

“It wasn’t my deepest desire, okay?” he says, more quietly. He doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t think he can stand to see the look on Dean’s face, not if he’s going to get this out. “They were good memories, yeah. That’s it. Just good memories. Not perfect. Not heaven. I mean, _technically_ it was heaven, but, just the outskirts, it… I… Dean, they weren’t what I wanted, you know that. I wanted _you_. We were supposed to be _together_ in heaven. Ash said that.”

“Every good memory you had was of getting away from us,” comes Dean’s quiet voice from behind him. He starts to turn before remembering his resolution and closing his eyes instead. Stars burn behind his eyelids, just an afterimage, nothing solid.

“My good memories weren’t about you, Dean. They were about me.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah.”

“Shut up. Listen to me. I spent eighteen years trying to justify the way I didn’t fit in by saying that you and Dad were the ones who were wrong, screwed up, and that I just wanted to be normal. But it wasn’t normal that I wanted. I just wanted to fit. I wanted to fit somewhere, _anywhere_.”

“You fit with us.” The answer is immediate and predictable. Dean’s on the defensive. Of course.

“I didn’t, Dean, and you fucking know it. I tried. I—” Sam’s voice breaks. He clears his throat, opens his eyes. Looks at the stars. Tries again. “I did try. For a long time. But I just couldn’t. You and Dad were so totally _sold_ on it, on the whole thing, and I just—I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I would’ve given anything to be like you, to be just like _you_ , Dean, I thought you were—I _worshiped_ you. But no matter how hard I tried, I _wasn’t_ like you. Sometimes I could go for a couple of days without being—without being me. And you’d say something like, wow, Sam, you’ve been really easygoing lately, you’ve been in a really good mood. I’d try to hold it, Dean, I would, but I just _couldn’t._ No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t stop being _me_ , and I was selfish, and _miserable_ , and I—”

His voice breaks again, and the pinpricks of light in the sky are blurring into vague halos. He swallows and blinks hard. Once. Twice.

“Man, I was awful. I was awful to you and I was awful to Dad, and I just couldn’t—I couldn’t seem to get it right. I thought, if I could just have a normal life, that’d be something I was good at. Instead of spending my whole life as a fucking  _disappointment_.”

He pauses. Not a sound from behind him, but there’s a chorus of crickets, and when he just listens to them, just focuses on the cool, moist air, on the stars, he can almost imagine he’s alone.

“So that’s what the memories were about. Okay? They were about me getting to do something right, or at least… at least be somewhere where I didn’t feel _wrong_ , didn’t constantly feel like a puzzle piece that was the wrong fucking shape. It’s not like I was just… it’s not like my good memories were just every time I told Dad to suck it. Okay?”

His voice has been pretty steady so far, but he knows there’s more he has to say, and he’s afraid he won’t make it all the way to the end. At least Dean isn’t interrupting anymore.

“So yeah, those were good memories. Times when I felt like I could just be me, and I didn’t have to force myself into some kind of mold. But, Dean… Dean, the center of heaven, the time when I felt the most… when I was…”

Deep breaths, he reminds himself. _Keep it together, Sam._

“When it all comes down to it, the place I felt the most at home, the most like my real self, was with you. So just… I’m sorry we didn’t get along, I’m sorry we…” He stops, remembering Dean’s derisive words from earlier.

 _Obviously our relationship suffered because I didn’t give you time to tell me how_ sorry  _you were._

Fuck.

Sam puts his hands in his pockets and tips his head back to stare at the sky. The stars are really clear out here, and the air smells like wet grass, and except for the crickets, they might be alone in the world. If not for the decade-and-a-half separating him from July 4th, 1996, it could almost be the same night, going on and on forever, just like he wished it would when he was thirteen.

“Sorry I ruined Fourth of July for you,” he says at last, because he’s starting to think that this was a mistake, that maybe they should’ve let the fourth of July slip through the cracks with Christmas and birthdays and all the other ugly reminders of the ways they can never be happy.

It’s quiet for a long time, and he’s suddenly, absurdly, seized with the fear that Dean is  _gone_ , and he really is alone in this clearing with the crickets and the forgotten box of fireworks. He’s afraid to turn around. If he’s really alone, he doesn’t want to know.

“Sammy.”

Dean’s voice is soft, and it cracks on the last syllable of his name. Sam turns at once, swept simultaneously with relief and new fear.

Dean has his legs drawn up to his chest, one arm slung loosely around his knees; he’s staring at Sam with moist, shiny green eyes.

He shifts, stretching his legs out, setting his beer off to the side. He beckons.

“C’mere.”

Uncertain, Sam goes to stand in front of him. Dean pats the hood of the car and Sam slides into his place next to his big brother.

Dean wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. Sam’s stiff at first, but Dean’s insistent, and he eventually relaxes. After a moment, he wriggles a little to line himself up with Dean more closely, slipping his arm loosely around Dean’s waist, and ducks his head to rest on Dean’s shoulder.

“Hey, Sammy, check it out,” Dean says against his hair, breath warm on Sam’s chilled skin.

Sam’s voice feels as thin as a thread. “Yeah?”

“Perfect fit.”

A shiver goes through him and he huffs, burying his face in Dean’s shoulder. But Dean’s right. They fit. He smells like leather and smoke, and his arm is draped over Sam’s broad shoulders with his fingers just brushing Sam’s collarbone, and Sam can feel Dean’s warm skin against his cheek and mouth and Dean’s hipbone shifting under his palm, and dammit, they _fit_.

“You belong here, Sam,” Dean says quietly, speaking right next to Sam’s ear, and this time Sam really does feel like they’re the only two people in the world. “Right here with me. And don’t you forget it.”

Sam closes his eyes and nods, swallowing. Dean’s arm around his shoulders gives him a little squeeze. He can’t find the strength to squeeze back.

After a minute, Dean’s shoulder bumps against his cheek. “You ready to set off fireworks, or do we have to keep up the cuddling all night?”

Sam snorts without moving from his place against Dean’s neck. “You started it, man. Don’t look at me.”

Dean withdraws his arm and Sam (reluctantly) straightens up.

“Well, I’m finishing it,” Dean says. He brings the beer bottle to his lips and knocks back the last ounce, then tosses it away to the side, where it shatters against the tree and tinkles to the ground. “Whaddya wanna start with?”

“Roman candles.”

“You got it.” Dean slides off the hood of the car and goes digging through one of their boxes, straightening up and turning back to Sam with a Roman candle in each hand and a grin on his face. “Let’s light up the dark, Sam. You’n me.”

Sam smiles and reaches for one of them. Dean joins him on the hood of the Impala again and lights both candles at the same time; in sync, the brothers raise their arms, waiting for the wick to burn out.

The trail of smoke it leaves behind doesn’t seem to matter in the face of the explosion lighting up the sky, a million different moments scattered across time, a million bits of color mingling with the stars.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at i-am-therefore-i-fight.tumblr.com/post/54638297008 under the name "And We Lit Up the Sky."


End file.
